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Bloomberg Wall Street Week - June 7th, 2024

Jun 08, 202438 min
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Episode description

On this edition of Wall Street Week, Sarah Ketterer, Causeway Capital CEO tells us why higher rates have a sobering effect on markets. Ralph Schlosstein, Evercore Chairman Emeritus says we are in a period of returning deal activity. Raghuram Rajan, Former Reserve Bank of India Governor and Chicago Booth School Professor of Finance explains what's next for India after Narendra Modi's narrow victory and Jim Farley, Ford CEO, Mike Duggan, Detroit Mayor and Bloomberg's Michael Barr look at Detroit's proud history, its decline, and comeback. 

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Transcript

Speaker 1

This is Bloomberg Wall Street Week.

Speaker 2

The global push into infrastructure, breaking the IPO logjam in text.

Speaker 3

The financial stories that shape.

Speaker 2

Our work, cutting inflation without losing jobs. Do we need rate cuts and if so? How many? Investing in the time of geopolitical turmoil.

Speaker 1

Through the eyes of the most influential voices.

Speaker 2

Ten Rogueff Economists of Harvard, former FDIC had Shiela Beert g E CEO Larry Kulp, San Francisco FED President Mary Daily Bloomberg.

Speaker 1

Wall Street Week with David Weston from Bloomberg Radio.

Speaker 2

Big elections in Mexico and India. In Europe, the ECB cuts rates, and in the US all eyes are on the jobs numbers. This is Bloomberg Wall Street Week. I'm David Weston. This week we're Alph Schlostein of Evercore on getting deals back on track or actually.

Speaker 3

In a period of returning activity.

Speaker 2

Ragaram Rajin of the Booth School on what the Indian election means for investors.

Speaker 4

Hopefully a more democratic to India, which is what this election means actually into some of them.

Speaker 2

And Ford CEO Jim Farley on the return of Detroit and the US auto industry.

Speaker 5

Were in a different era where Detroit is growing after decades.

Speaker 2

We begin with the markets and their reaction to those US jobs numbers out on Friday. Once again, the labor market surprised thep side, adding another two hundred and seventy two thousand jobs with earnings increasing four tenths of a percent, both well above what was expected, and at the same time,

the unemployment rate paradoxically ticked up to four percent. The bond market reacted with a vengeance, as the yield shot up fourteen basis points to four point four to three percent at the end of the week that until Friday was all about falling yields. The stock market, though once again,

seemed to take it pretty much in strive. For the week, the S and P five hundred was up one point three percent to close at fifty three forty seven, and that is nicely above that median number our Bloomberg ls have for the year end of fifty two hundred, and the NASDAC it was up two point four percent for the week. To take us through all us Now, welcome to Sarah Ketter of Causeway Capitals. So, Sarah, thank you

so much for being back with this really appreciated. So explain exactly what the market reaction was this week, because the stock market really didn't react too vigorously, although the bond market did to these jobs numbers.

Speaker 6

Well, thanks David.

Speaker 7

That stock market is likely taking its queue from earnings more than it is any of these potential underlying impetus for changes and interest rates.

Speaker 6

The likely most investors.

Speaker 7

Recognize that the FED is in a difficult position and lowering rates might be tough with this sort of strong data. On the other hand, earnings coming out of some of the market leaders still looks really good, and that's probably what's keeping the market aflut So.

Speaker 2

I wonder about this question of interest rate. There's a lot of speculation about what's going to happen this year for the fad we winning the year with six six rate cuts blood baked in. We're way off of that now at this point. But what about for the longer term? Are we is getting a sense maybe the longer term intry some people call the nutro rate will be higher And if so, what does that mean for you as an equity investor?

Speaker 7

Well, if you care about valuation, you have to use tools like discount rates. In other words, as stock is just worth the present value of all the cash that can generate into perpetuity discounted to present, and the higher that discount rate goes, the less the cash flow stream is worth, or they give it another way that the valuation multiples need to come down.

Speaker 6

So prolonged higher.

Speaker 7

Rates is a kind of a sobering effect for markets and investors.

Speaker 6

We have to be very careful about what we pay.

Speaker 7

And it also makes fixed income a very viable alternative to equities, so there's competition out there. So higher rates, if they're sustained, also have economic impacts.

Speaker 6

That we have to take into account when we do valuation work.

Speaker 7

Old myriad of reasons why sustained higher rates can lead to a tougher environment for stocks, not just because companies' earnings may be under pressure, but also because investors might want to go elsewhere or.

Speaker 2

For any reasonable period of time. The stock market has done pretty well, take the S and PO five hundred, for example, but there are a few stocks that have really driven it disproportionately. Some of those big tech stacks at AI stacks. Can I keep going?

Speaker 6

They could.

Speaker 7

It's very hard to call the tops of any of these stocks that have so much momentum behind them. And have sold their product like Nvidia far out into the future. They look so certain, and yet as the price rises, it gets closer to something that approximates fair value. And we're not seeing the big earnings upgrades any longer. Let pace of that is slowed. So it's very likely that these big market leaders, at least for the time being the next twelve months, have seen the bulk of their returns.

Speaker 6

Now is what's the next set of stocks?

Speaker 7

It will benefit from the same theme that propelled these big these big market leaders. And if it's not Gpu, it's not the chips, and it's not the servers or the data centers, than what and there are some fascinating great stocks in that layer beneath who should benefit from,

for example, the demand for much more memory. So that's DRAM memory, not just the high bendwidth memory that an SK Micron has and Samsung Electronics soon will have, and Micron in the US, but even the commodity memory will be more in demand because there's only so much factory floor space. There's almost only so much room to make these high bandwidth memory chips. They're faster, they're they're more

less power consumptive. So memory is so interesting, and stocks like Samsung traded very reasonable multiple.

Speaker 2

What about some of the stocks that have actually taken something of a hit taking the information tech services area and the assumption that perhaps AI generative AI really hurt their business. Is it possible the market's overreacted with some of those.

Speaker 7

Oh, those stocks had a terrible time when Cloud was first transitioning because enterprises say, oh, we can do it ourselves, and they very much can't. First of all, for most companies, they need to build the infrastructure to adopt AI tools,

So infrastructure comes first and then application second. And there are you can look across almost all IT services companies and find that the market is very negative on them, but they have good based businesses and without doubt, and says companies like Cognizant, for example in the US or Fujitsu in Japan, the orders will have to pick up because enterprises we're going to need help.

Speaker 6

They'll have to work.

Speaker 7

Enterprises will have to work with their IT services companies in ways they'd never done before in order to implement AI.

Speaker 2

Sarah, it's always such a pleasure to have you with us. Thank you so much. That is Sarah Kutter of Causeway Capital Higher rates and greater uncertainty have put a damper on corporate deals coming off of what had been record years. To fill us in on where things stand today, we welcome back now Ralph Schlostein evercore chairman Emeritis. So Relph, great to have you back with us. Where are we right now on deal flow?

Speaker 3

Well, we're actually in a period of returning activity. So if you look, particularly in the US, announced transactions in the first half of the first five months of the year are about forty percent of last year. The last two years have been a period of low activity, driven by predominantly by uncertainty rather than economic uncertainty, because that

is the enemy of M and A activity. And if you look back over the last forty five years, go back to nineteen eighty, m and A has generally been characterized by five to eight year up cycles and two to three year down cycles. And we're kind of at the end of that two to three year down cycle and at the beginning of what I suspect will be an extended period of increased activity, twenty four being better than twenty three and twenty five being better than twenty four.

Speaker 2

So, as you know, here a Bloomberg repay. A lot of attention to the FED. Are they going to cut it? They're not going to cut it, They're going to raise what's going to happen. At the beginning of the year there was something like six great cuts priced in. Now we're down to maybe one. Does that affect CEOs thing about doing deals? It really doesn't.

Speaker 3

What they care more about is the availability of debt capital rather than the cost. And I think we're at a period right now where the cost of debt capital the risks are asymmetric. The risk that it goes up is lower than the risk that it stays where it is or drifts down. So that's kind of off the table today. In terms of transaction activity, economic uncertainty and political uncertainty now are not unimportant in having people think hard about whether they do transactions.

Speaker 2

If you talk to private credit people, is I know you do all the time? They say, Yes, we're lending a lot of money, but we're much more careful about it. We put a lot more restrictions and covenants and things like that on it.

Speaker 3

Is that true in your experience? No, To be honest, I think there's this thing called the credit cycle that we've heard about for many years and credit. There are periods of time like right now, where people feel some amount of pressure to put assets on the books, whether they're private credit or banking, and that tends to weaken a little bit. The underwriting discipline not thrown away, because I think we all learned from two thousand and eight

that discipline and credit is really really important. But I recall once when I was at Blackrock, we were hired by Xerox to make a decision about what they should do with their insurance business. And one of the things we did is we visited five of the smarter people in the insurance property and casualty business, one of whom was Warren Buffett. So we flew out to Omaha and we met with him, and he talked about the property

and casualty business. He said, you know, I've bought every single one of my underwriters a golf club membership, and the only thing that I do is I tell them when they must use their golf club membership and when they can't. And his point was, there's sometimes when the underwriting cycle is really bad, and I want you all to play golf, and there are times when it's really attractive and that's when I want you to not play golf and write lots of policies. And you know, bankers

and private credit don't have that same luxury. So you know, discipline not in major ways, but in minor ways. Ebbs and flows and pricing, the tightening of spreads. So we've had a period where longer term interest rates have risen that has been largely offset by a tightening of spreads versus the treasury market. So a double B borrower today can borrow more cheaply than they could a year ago, notwithstanding the fact the treasury rates are up eighty ninety basis points.

Speaker 2

Cycles and M and A. Are there also trends because most recently some of the deals we've seen have not been conglomerations really bringing together bigger companies, but actually focus spinning off. If you look at g you look at DuPont. Is that a trend right now? Are people more interesting focusing?

Speaker 3

I would say, you know, over forty to fifty years, you've seen a period of time when conglomerates were overvalued relative to the sum of their parts and period when they are undervalued. We're in one of those periods where in companies that are in multiple disconnected business lines. The value of the whole company is generally less than the value of its constituent parts. Ralph s Losneger is.

Speaker 2

Going to be staying with us. As returned from the business climate for merchants and acquisitions to the political climate as next on Wall Street Week on Bloomberg.

Speaker 1

This is Bloomberg Wall Street Week with David Weston from Bloomberg Radio.

Speaker 2

This is Wall Street Week. I'm David western Evercourt chairman of Meritis. Ralph last nine has stayed with us. So, Ralph, you were good enough to tell us about the business climate for Emine And let's talk about the political climate where we are right now, particularly as we're looking toward an election come November. What are the things that might affect actually the level of deals that get done well.

Speaker 3

First of all, you have to recognize that anti trust is driven predominantly by the law. The law has not changed. There are people at the FTC and obviously the Assistant Attorney General for Anti trust who may have a more aggressive or less aggressive posture within the confines of the law, and sometimes not within the confines of the law. So there's no question that the Biden administration has tried to, you know, reasonably aggressively slowed down activity almost any transaction

of consequence. There is a discussion of that, and what you're finding increasingly, where there's a judgment that the anti trust law is not being violated, companies are willing to go ahead and basically say, let them take me to court.

Speaker 2

So you worked for President Carter, as I recall, in the Carter White House, and you've been identified with democratic causes through the years. At the same time, you're very much a part of Wall Street. There's sort of a prevailing sense right now among some of Wall Street right now that it just makes sense for them personally to have Trump in the White House because they'll make more money, they'll be richer.

Speaker 3

Is that wrong? Well, it's interesting. I once got asked what was the very best piece of advice I received in my entire forty five year professional career was actually the first day of my very first job, when I was an economist on the Joint Economic Committee, and the staff director had this sort of welcome talk that he gave to, you know, kids right out of graduate school, and the gist of it was listen to people. This was a Joint committee bipartisan committee. You're going to have

disagreements on substance, but never question someone's motives. So I do believe certainly that there are some people in the Wall Street community, the financial community, who probably are driven to a certain extent by what's best for their pocketbooks.

Speaker 2

But I'm also.

Speaker 3

I think, open minded enough to say that there are certainly some of them who may support President Trump who do so because they have, you know, particular policy agreements with him or disagreements with the current administration. So I don't think it's purely financial. And I happen to be, as you say, very democratically inclined. But in this election, honestly, I think the stakes and policy are really important, but the stakes on support of our democratic institutions are even

more important. And the idea that our judiciary deserves to be truly independent, the idea that our federal reserve should be truly independent, the idea that our Justice Department should be free to investigate independently, the idea that our press should feel unencumbered by fear of reprisal if they report, you know, unhappily on the current administration. Those are things to me that are so important that to me, that's a really critical part of this selection.

Speaker 2

I didn't mean to suggest it's wrong to be considered a pocketbook because it's generally thought in most elections, most voters in part are voting their pocketbook. It's perfectly understandable.

But when it comes to a Trump administration, one of the differences potentially with the Bide administration is taxes, the excise, which is taxation, and it's closely I think related to a concern that some people express that just the Biden administration, for whatever reason, has gotten the government just involved in a lot more of business and that that's not in the long term healthy.

Speaker 3

What do you make of that, well, I think attractiveness of generally Republican policies in terms of a little, you know, somewhere between a little and a lot less regulation, I'm not negative on that, to be very honest. I think the most critical thing for narrowing the economic gap in this country is economic growth and regulation. Sometimes over regulation

can certainly constrain economic growth. So I think there are elements of what would be considered traditional Republican policy that I think are very supportive of economic growth and helping those who are in need in our society. Tax policy, I think two things are really important. One is the share of our GDP that goes to federal taxes. Today it's around sixteen percent. That's down from about nineteen percent. We're not paying for the government that we want and

that's a long term, non sustainable situation. So that has to be corrected one way or other. And the second thing is, I think you know, the tax policy has been significantly responsible for the widening in the wealth gap

in this country. I'm one of these very rare people in finance who believes that capital gains and dividends should be taxed like ordinary income rather than at half the rate, because there's no reason on the planet that when I make a private equity investment the tax rate should be less than somebody who's making a couple hundred thousand dollars a year and working forty fifty sixty seventy hours a week. I'm a minority. I probably even am a minority in

my own party in that regard. But look, I think if you look back over centuries and centuries, great societies failed because the have had too much relative to the have nots, and that's not a healthy thing for America in my view.

Speaker 2

Okay, well, thank you so very much. It's really great Davy with us. That's Ralph Shlstein of Evercore. India completed its national elections this week and to the surprise of many, President Modi did not receive the overwhelming majority that had been expected. For an early sense of what this may mean for the Indian economy and for investors, welcome now rogarram Rogen. He is the former governor of the Reserve Bank of India. Mister Rogin is now professor of finance

at Chicago's Boost School. So, professor, thank you so much for joining us. I know it's early going, but obviously Premiseermody was known for his economic reforms, his economic projects. What do you think is made of those enlighted this narrow victory.

Speaker 4

Well, first, he doesn't have a majority anymore with his party, so he needs coalition partners, which means he needs to develop more consensus as he goes along. I think that's good news actually, because part of what was going on with this guy government was it had a lot of reforms in its first term, but the second term has been more focused on the social agenda of the government.

Sometimes the majority in agenda, while the few attempts at economic reforms, including the change in agricultural laws, were done without developing a broad consensus and essentially were withdrawn after tremendous pushback by the farmers. So this may actually mean that the reforms that are proposed going forward have more consensus and therefore more sticking power.

Speaker 2

Did the reforms in your opinion? Are they likely to focus on some of the lower income families, because the reports at least of the politics of this election were that many of the lower income voters did not back mister motive.

Speaker 8

Yeah.

Speaker 4

I think a big problem which the government hadn't paid enough attention to was growing levels of unemployment, especially amongst educated youth, a growing sense of insecureity amongst poorer households. The small and medium enterprises were also suffering, so essentially the government was looking at the big you know, capital

intensive enterprises which comprise much of the stock market. No wonder the stock market took fright after the early election results has come back a little bit, But really the government has to pay more attention to these groups and it actually may help even enhance growth over the short to medium term because consumption hasn't been strong. As these households feel anxious, you know, a revival in consumption could help the economic grow faster.

Speaker 2

One of the things that investors have paid attention to is inflation in India, which is still has inflation, but it's more out of control than it has been in the past. Is there are risk trying to address some of the needs from the voters who did that well for mister Bildy, that you actually have more physical stimulus and you actually have more problems with inflation going forward.

Speaker 4

Well, one of the sort of hallmarks of the Modi administration has been fiscal restraint, and I don't see why they should suddenly abandon that. Yes, there needs to be a repurposing of resources. As you know in a recent book, Breaking the Mold, I argue that you know, we need more jobs in areas like services, and that requires killing the workforce. That requires some redeployment of resources away from, for example, massive subsidies to manufacturing, to actually investing in

colleges and schools in skilling programs. But I think this is something that can be done without breaking the budget. Yes, there will be some more fiscal spending given the nature of the verdict, but I think it will help, you know, solidify the economy and actually remove household anxiety, which I think would be a big win.

Speaker 2

What do you think this election may mean for the relationship with the central government and the individual states? Understand it? In India, the states have a fair amount of power. The Prime Minister can't do certain things without this before the states. Is that going to shift now because mister Modi has perceived its being somewhat less powerful.

Speaker 4

It should, but I think in the right direction. One of the problems in the mood the administration has been the appointment of governors who have stood in the way of state governments doing what they wanted to do uh and not playing out as constitutional sort of impartial governors. And as a result, I think some of the states have not been able to sort of conduct the kinds

of programs that they wanted. I think that should be ameliorated in a new administration where there are checks and bounces on the government and where the press is a lot more inviegorated in pointing out some of these problems. I think in the last two administrations of the Modi government, the press was cowed, was un willing to point out problems.

Speaker 8

I think.

Speaker 4

With the press more alive, I think we'll get stronger debate and hopefully debate leads to better economic as well as political policy.

Speaker 2

Professor, thank you so very much for being with us. It's terribly helpful. As Raghuram Rajan of Chicago's Booth School coming up the highs and lows of the US auto industry and the motor city it created, we go to Detroit for the story of the rise and fall and rise again of a proud city and automaker.

Speaker 5

The train station felt like the right kind of challenge for four to be part of, so that we could be part of the revitalization of Detroit.

Speaker 2

That's next on Wall Street Week on Bloomberg.

Speaker 1

This is Bloomberg Well Street Week with David Weston from Bloomberg Radio.

Speaker 2

This is Wall Street Weeek. I'm David Weston. This week, the city of Detroit went back to its past on the way to its future with a grand reopening of Michigan Central Station, once a proud icon of the motor city, then a derelict hulk that was nearly torn down, and now restored to its former grandeur with the help of the Ford Motor Company and the dedication of a mayor

who just wouldn't give up. Our Bloomberg Radio colleague Michael Barr is a native Detroiter who watched the city burn during the Riots of the late sixties.

Speaker 9

I'm going to give away my age because that happened in sixty seven and I was three years old, and I was in southwest Detroit and at the time I saw the National Guard in a jeep go by. Now, being a stupid kid, I'm thinking, oh, Gi Joe, I didn't realize that the dagon city is burning down. It's sad and out between that, how the auto industry really took a hard nosedive.

Speaker 2

What was Detroit's lowest point do you think?

Speaker 10

Oh, I think probably bankruptcy in twenty thirteen was rock bottom.

Speaker 8

But we had a lot of bad years before that.

Speaker 10

And I said, I'm sixty five years old and the city of Detroit has lost population every year. I've been alive until last year. So that was a lot of years of auto plants moving out, restaurants moving out, movie theaters moving out, people moving out.

Speaker 2

The story of Detroit has long been a story of the auto companies that helped make it, sometimes for better and sometimes for worse.

Speaker 5

I think World War Two is a big challenge for the company. And when Henry Ford the second led the company back to a revitalized state, you know, we went through the whiz kids. We hired all these logistics experts from the army after the World War Two, and they really created this kind of bureaucratic but an incredibly efficient machine. And the company was back in the sixties, and then

the energy crisis came. The company didn't have efficient vehicles, it wasn't competitive amount quality, and it really low this way in the seventies as well as the city of Detroit after the riots, and you know, we were lost in.

Speaker 2

Less than twenty five years.

Speaker 4

Henry Ford, the son of I the America dualism and freedom of enterprise.

Speaker 2

It wasn't always this way. As the twentieth century began, Henry Ford started mass producing a new mode of transportation, the automobile. In Detroit. Ford invited the first moving assembly line in the world, and by the nineteen twenties had produced some twenty million model tees.

Speaker 5

My grandfather's a good example. You know, he was an educated man, but he had a great job.

Speaker 3

At Ford and built his family.

Speaker 5

As kids went to college, eventually, and just like your family, you know, there are millions of people around our country, around the world, have been infected by Ford. And at that time Ford was the pinnacle. We had eighty percent market share globally of the car business.

Speaker 2

The Michigan Central Railway station was a result of that automotive success, built in nineteen thirteen when the mythic Ford Rouge plant was still under construction. At its peak, over two hundred passenger trains a day left the station, carrying over four thousand passengers, and another three thousand people worked in the office tower above the station.

Speaker 10

But again, I see Detroit through the eyes of a kid who remembers a beautiful city.

Speaker 8

I remembered a beautiful train station.

Speaker 2

But in the end, the auto industry that helped build Michigan Central was also a central cause of its fall. As people moved away from passenger trains and took to the cars, Detroit was churning out for the entire country.

By the nineteen eighties, it was the domestic auto industry's turn, as US sales of the big three automakers peaked in nineteen seventy nine and then declined steadily ever since, falling victim to a rising tide of foreign cars, and with it, the entire state of Michigan's contribution to National GDP fell from over four percent to less than two point four percent.

Speaker 10

It was heartbreaking over the years to see Dodge Main.

Speaker 8

It was to see Cadillac Fleetwood close, and.

Speaker 10

The jobs went with them, and they went to the suburbs, and eventually they went to Mexico.

Speaker 2

By the start of this century, what was once a glorious building had been abandoned, its windows broken, its roof open to the sky, its marble scavenged.

Speaker 8

With the windows gone, the air blowing through.

Speaker 10

It was depressing every single time it came into town on the freeway.

Speaker 2

By twenty thirteen, the Detroit City Council had voted to tear Michigan Central down, and it took a Detroit backed by Dan Gilbert's real estate investments, a determined Mayor Duggan, and a Bill Ford, whose family had helped build Detroit, to reclaim it and restore Michigan Central to what as of this week it is again.

Speaker 10

So from my first day in office, getting that train station reoccupied was a central focus. There was no way it was going to be a demolished just meant too much to too many generations. And so my first month, Matt Moron and the owner, was in my office had a list of things that they wanted and I said, I want one thing.

Speaker 8

I want you to put windows in that abandoned train station.

Speaker 10

And he looked to me like I was crazy, and I said, all people see when they look at the train station is blake.

Speaker 8

I remember when it was beautiful.

Speaker 10

And so we made a deal on some other things where they spend a million dollars to put in windows. And when the windows started to go in, it hit an electric effect in the city.

Speaker 8

Everybody driving by in the freeway said, oh my god.

Speaker 2

For Michigan Central and for Detroit to come back, Ford and the rest of the auto industry had to come back as well, once again showing their mutual dependence, which is why Ford stepped up with nearly a billion dollars to rebuild a train station from nineteen thirteen that hadn't been used in nearly forty years.

Speaker 5

I think it's you know, obviously it's a family company.

He builds vision, but also for the train station is very much a symbol, a kind of a along our journey to to create a great company, and we avoided bankruptcy, which was amazing in the early two thousands, mid two thousands, but to build a vibrant company, you know, in the ev world, the digital vehicle world, the train station felt like the right kind of challenger project to afford to be part of, so that we could be part of the you know, revitalization.

Speaker 2

Of Detroit, which had really.

Speaker 5

Been kind of used by almost the national media as a you know, example of the decay of the country. And this felt like the kind of project that would be emblematic of our recovery as a company. It's a very American story really of starts and stops, of great leadership at moments, but at other moments a loss of focus on the customer. I mean this is this is the truism of an industrial company. You have to have cost and quality pettiveness and that changes. The benchmark changes.

Oh at many points of the you know, we almost went banquet with the model t If you look at the company, this has happened many, many times. It's a company that's been through a lot. But it's a company though that when it gets is back against the wall, something magical happens.

Speaker 2

Where are you on the roadback. How far along that road are you?

Speaker 5

Our backs are off the stovepipes. We're well into the messy middle of the most transformational time other than the Model T. You know, we've never gone through this electrification transition for low CO two drive trains. We've never had a digital product before. We never could give people time back like we will with level three autonomy. We're investing in all that enabling technology. We're very profitable with our

pro business and our combustion business. We have vehicles like Bronco Mustang they're doing n F one fifty that are doing so well, but we still have a lot of execution to do. I'd say, you know, we're just a few years away from another vibrant period for the company, and as leaders, we see it before everyone else sees it, and so it's it's exciting for us, but we feel a tremendous amount of responsibility for your parents, for you, for my grandparents.

Speaker 2

As Ford and the other Detroit automakers have fought their way back, they've brought jobs with them. Michigan unemployment peaked apart from the pandemic in nineteen eighty three at sixteen point five percent, well above the national average, and now it's all the way down to three point nine percent, right at that national average.

Speaker 10

But when I started, I sat with Bill Ford, I sat with Mary Barr, and I sat then with Sergio Marcioni, who was running Fiat Chrysler, and I said, look, if Detroit's going to come back, we've got to come back on our strength. We're not going to be the tech hobb the biomedical hibe. The next time use site of parts plant, please ask them to come talk to me first.

Speaker 2

William Faulkner famously wrote that the past is never dead. It's not even passed. This week we had our fair share of reminders of the past remaining very much with us in Detroit. The iconic Michigan Central Station came back from the near dead and emerged as a gleaming new home for Google and high tech mobility.

Speaker 5

This is going to be an innovation hub with software engineers and our Ford pro business and many non forward people in the building.

Speaker 2

Memestocks like GameStop, which seemed oh so twenty twenty one, came roaring back to life, with Keith Gill posting on social media what appeared to be a one hundred and sixteen million dollar position in the stock, together with a green reverse unocard, which seems a bit retro in and of itself.

Speaker 11

The only people that I really dislike and loathe in this entire situation are the people who pretend that buying Game Stop or buying AMC is some sort of like revolutionary actor, like sticking it to the man, or like that it makes no sense, there's no like, there's no there there.

Speaker 2

And speaking of social media, this week, former President Trump returned to the question of TikTok, but came up with a very different answer. This time. When he was president, he wanted to ban it. Now that he's on a quest to attract young voters, he decided, you'd rather join it.

Speaker 3

The president is now on TikTok's in my honor.

Speaker 2

And when it comes to politics, what could be more nostalgic than a rematch of Trump and Biden, something we saw most recently only four years ago. I have never tried to forecast the outcome of an election where you had the current incumbent running against the former incumbent in big media. This week we saw two very different examples of the past, not ever fully going away. As Rupert Murdock got married for the fifth time at the mature age of ninety three, to a woman twenty six years

his junior. But mister Murdoch's marriage may have been eclipsed by a bigger union in the media world, as Paramount moved toward merging with David Ellison's Sky and Studio, something that's been in the works for a while now, and that is very much driven by the media revolution of streaming, which is yet another example of the past never being entirely behind us. We've had periodic upsets in the media

world that almost always bring corporate shakeups. When I went to Cap Cities ABC in nineteen ninety one, broadcast television was in the process of being turned upside down by what we used to call basic cable, a new way to get better reception of network reruns that turned into a powerhouse of original programming tailor made for particular audiences,

everything from drama to sports, to news to cooking. And as much as we talked about it, too many of us at the network told ourselves that this upstart cable could never challenge the strength of the networks. But it's safe to say that was a simpler and occasionally more ridiculous time.

Speaker 10

The decision has been passed down to make Veronica or co anchor.

Speaker 2

Now, let's hope that as big media makes the big transition this time, we can leave some of the past truly behind us.

Speaker 3

That does it.

Speaker 2

For this episode of Wall Street Week, I'm David Weston. This is Bloomberg. See you next week.

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